Hooters Girl

November 10-11, 2008

Adventure Week Begins

So one day I realized that I would be one flight short of getting on Southwest's A-list by the end of this month, and decided to take an impromptu trip to Vegas.  I would have gone to a Pella or NKOTB show, but I didn't have the next day off, and they were not in convenient places for me to travel to in the span of 30 hours or so.  So Vegas it would be.

I really didn't have much of a plan in mind, really.  I just figured that it wouldn't matter what time I'd arrive, since the strip never closes, and I didn't even think I needed a room if I could just find a place to doze every couple of hours.

TravelZoo, however, sent out an e-mail about Vegas deals, so I looked them up and found out that Hooters Hotel and Casino was having a special during weekdays in November for $39.00/night plus discounts and $200.00 in free play.  I figured that was good enough for me to have a place to stay in case I actually felt like sleeping.  I had a few friends that considered going with me, but it didn't matter.  I was going.  The flight was booked, and now the hotel.  Unfortunately, nobody could go with me, but I decided that it could be a solo adventure for me.  I decided at the last minute to book a rental car on Priceline, and got my price of $20.00/day, so I was good to go.  Maybe I should have bid $10.00, just to try.

I went to the Burbank/Bob Hope In'tl Airport after work, and as I was sitting there waiting for the plane, I reached for the lotion in my plastic bag of toiletries, and proceeded to use it on my hands.  Then I turned over the bottle to see the llllabel, and right there, it said "conditioner."  Well, did you know that hair conditioner has much the same consistency as lotion?  Well, it does.  Anyway, after seeing Obama's picture on TIME magazine in a special commemorative issue, I decided to purchase it, and later boarded the plane.  Oh, they randomly picked someone's name from the not-A-list to get the A-list treatment for the day.  The first person never responded, so the honors went to this handsome hunky guy that I found myself trying not to stare at too obviously.  

We landed in Vegas at about 7:30 p.m., and I got my little Chevy Aveo economy-class rental car.  This was soooo NOT the PFCV, but I expected that, so no biggie.  I'm not used to having to actually use a manual crank to roll down the windows anymore, and found the manual side-view mirror adjustment to be stupid.  I mean, what are you supposed to do if you're alone, find some stranger to get in the car with you to help you adjust the mirror?  You can't adjust it from the passenger seat unless someone from the driver's seat is telling you if they can see what's necessary.  It's just asinine, if you ak me.  I should have bid $5.00, now that I think of it.

I drove over to Hooters, and found the back way into the parking structure, but got there safely, and wandered around a portion of the casino floor, trying to find a sign toward hotel registration.  I couldn't find it without an employee's help.  There never was a sign, except for the one actually AT registration.  I could have also just been overwhelmed by whatever sweet tropical smell that seemed to be piped in through the air vents.  It wasn't a nice banana smell like in Mandalay Bay, so I didn't really like it that much.  It was like being in the essence of a strawberry-pineapple daiquiri, which is fine if you're drinking it at the time, but not mixed in with cigarette smoke.  Anyway, I checked in, and went up to my room, which was located in the Bay View tower.  My room was on the 9th floor, and was very close to the elevator lobby, but it didn't bother me at all.  I was just happy to see a picture of a bat on one of the surfboards that it is hung up on the wall, presumably so you could see what floor you were on, but I had trouble finding the numbers on the boards whenever the elevator doors would open on other floors.  

I didn't really have much to unpack, so I didn't.  I decided to just familiarize myself with my surroundings a little bit.  There was a lot of orange decor in the room-- on both bedspreads, on the lampshades, and on the chair pads.  I had a little bar-height table with two barstools.  The cabinet only had one drawer, all the rest of it was shelves.  I guess drawers are expensive.  Even the night table didn't have a drawer.  They did have some stationery, though, so I used one of my envelopes for my trip receipts (I learned that tip from Southwest's "Spirit" magazine, and it's worked for keeping my business trips organized).  They don't have any Hooters notepads, just some plain notepad.  The hotel is an overmodel of whatever used to be there, which was evidenced by the old fixtures in the bathroom.  Bath amenities were provided by the Hooters line.

I went downstairs to the casino and joined the Owl Rewards club.  If you play enough, you get a stuffed Hooters owl, which is manufactured especially for the hotel by GUND.  If you play even more than enough, you get a bigger owl.  I received my $200.00 free play coupon, which, unfortunately, wasn't a part of the Owl Rewards club card per se, as it would be in one of the Native American casinos when you sign up for their club.  (OK, so it wouldn't be $200.00, but at least you could pace yourself).  Instead, the coupons were for a designated area of slots that were $5.00 minimum bet.  The attendant places 2 $100.00 bills into the machine (you can't keep it, but you can split it as one on a machine, then the other bill on another).  The trick is that you are you are required to play 2 credits at a time, which is $10.00 per bet.  So you only get 10 chances per bill to get however many points that gets you a win.  So I lost that in, like, 2 minutes.  No bonuses on these machines, people.  Just lameness.

I then played on real machines to get myself off that feeling of "ain't no way I'm winning a damn thing today."  So I lost $5.00 in those and decided that I'd better shop in case their stores would close.  I did a little bit of shopping and stupidly forgot that I had a 25% coupon that I could have used for my spree of a bottle of G2, Hooters socks, and a comb.  I did want some kind of souvenir, and told myself that if they had socks, I'd get them.  And there they were!  They're APPARENTLY high-tech socks or something, because there was a lot of information about them on the tag.  Weird.  Anyway, I went up to my room to put my stuff away, realized it was 9:00, and that I could sit around awhile and watch some TV.  So I watched for, like, 3 hours, with some napping in those last 2 hours.  

A little after midnight, I perked up and decided to go back downstairs to play again.  I was tempted to get the 25-cent hot wings that were provided at Dan Marino's restaurant from midnight to 6 a.m., thinking that my stomach would probably thank me later.  I had some luck with bonus rounds on the Mystical Mermaid, Lucky Leprechaun, Money Storm, Slotsky, and Alien machines, although not so much that I actually ended up on the winning side in the end.  I went to sleep at about 2:30 a.m.

In the more-for-regular-daytimers morning, I woke up, took my shower, spilled Hooters lotion on my bedsheets (I swear that the little container was not allowing me to control the lotion dispensation easily -- twice.  It was crazy, and I kept laughing to myself about my lotion troubles), then got dressed and went downstairs for the free breakfast buffet that was part of my hotel package.  This was in the aforementioned Dan Marino's restaurant.  Did Mr. Marino actually think up these recipes?  Because I hardly believe that he could support the soupy scrambled eggs that were made available.  The potatoes were good, though, probably because of the strips of red onion and the black pepper.  I think that's what they used.  They didn't really keep up with replenishing the supply very often, because I would have liked to have more fruit, but whatever.  It was free for me.  

I played a little bit more before going upstairs to get ready to go.  This time, my Enchanted Unicorn game actually helped me out a with a couple of bonus rounds, as did the Little Green Men.  Funny how most of the machines that I enjoy playing (because they don't rip me off so quickly) are copyrighted by IGT.  :)  The Goldfish hated me, the Monopoly guy was good for about a minute, and the Hitchcock machine made me feel like a victim in one of his movies.  All of those were games from other companies.  They must know something about me.   The casino floor itself really isn't that big, but it's a small hotel anyway.  I miss my cows, and I wish that they had Star Wars machines, too.

I thought of walking over to the MGM, but then I'd have to find the pedestrian access to cross the huge street, and hadn't woken up early enough to do that.  So I got in my car and thought of another casino where it would be easy to park, play, and leave.  I headed over to South Point, but there was so much traffic that by the time I got there, I would have only had 10 minutes to find a parking space and play something before needing to leave for the airport, so I just decided to go the airport early, which didn't hurt at all.

The way to the C Gates for Southwest was different from my last trip there: you no longer need to take a tram, and don't even need to go to where the A, B & D gates are located, so you bypass all of the other airlines.  They had some brand-spankin' new security tools, like a big booth for special passengers (I didn't get to see it used, though).  The airport is building some new restaurants for the C gates, so maybe I'll get to see them the next time that I go there.  I can't remember any of their names right now, but I was impressed at the time that I saw their signs.

My flight home was thankfully uneventful.  I had originally thought of getting home early enough so that I could watch the Veteran's Day flag retreat at Disneyland, but I was too tired to do so, and ended up running errands instead.

I had a fun time, although I know that my friends would have made it much more enjoyable, and maybe I would have stayed up or stayed there a little bit longer if they had been with me.  But I survived my adventure.  A bigger adventure awaits at the end of the week, so I'm calling this Adventure Week for myself.  I don't know what I'll do tomorrow to keep with the theme, though.

Oh, and BTW, I really didn't look at the girls at Hooters, so I can't describe them to you.  The Hooters magazine in the hotel room had lots of pretty, sexy girls, though.  Lots of fake-looking boobs, too.  I mean, hello!  They can't be naturally that round.  Ya gotta have some help there, I think.

So who's going back to Vegas with me so that I can put more points toward that owl?  I'm over 100.  I need 800 more. :)